Yvonne Hasan

„I watch with surprise as my images are populated with ribbons of sorts, coming to life, engaging in conversations or dances. As Paul Klee noticed, purely visual elements that are placed in visual relations, resemble the natural forms. (..) searching for their basic principle, they become structures of solidity and balance, or signs of unsteadiness and turbulent progress in space. Only in this way it seems to me that they retain reality in all its density.”   – Yvonne Hasan, 1992

Magic Squares is an exhibition dedicated to artist Yvonne Hasan (1925-2016), one of the important figures of Romanian art. Her varied practice includes a multitude of elements -artistic mediums, such as collage, painting, drawing or tapestry, as well as the integration of objects belonging to her daily life, forming a true study of the time. Drawing its title from one of Klee’s art theories, the magic square, the exhibition explores Hasan’s works, in relationship to Paul Klee’s art theory. Hasan was influenced by the Bauhaus theories on color in her compositions, particularly Klee’s, whose work she studied in depth, publishing a monography dedicated to the artist, Paul Klee and Modern Painting in 1999. A new edition of this book is now under preparation.

The combination of found materials and figuration of daily life creates a kaleidoscopic documentation of the society she was living in, discreetly positioning herself against the realist art ideology of the communist era. From the 1990’s onwards, her works on paper becomes more and more abstract but always refer subtly to tangible elements, while her Super 8 mm films document the interplay of forms, light and texture, alongside capturing personal experiments or family outings.
(Cristina Bută)

Organizer: Bucharest Municipality through CREART – Centre for Creation, Art and Tradition
Curator: Cristina Bută